AUTOBLOG: Here are the most Googled car brands of 2018

Foreign manufacturers lead the way in the U.S.

Ever wondered what the most Googled car brands around the world were? Well, we’ve got the answer for you now. This data, collected by Veygo (an insurance company), takes into account searches from 2018 and separates the data by country. Toyota took the top spot in the U.S. this year. Mind you, 2018 isn’t quite over yet, but we’ve certainly accumulated the majority of the searches we’ll have.

It wasn’t just the U.S. that was fascinated with Toyota though. The Japanese manufacturer was most searched in more countries than any other car brand, with a total of 57 searching out Toyota the most. BMW was a distant second place as far as the most countries go, carrying 25 nations. Mercedes-Benz comes in at a close third with 23 countries searching out the three-pointed star the most. Tesla is still interesting enough nowadays to be the most searched for brand in seven countries. The most notable of those being China.

Countries tended not to search for car brands native to their homeland, with only a few exceptions. Perhaps the allure of something foreign and different is enough to pique curiosities? Some of the countries are a little more surprising than others, like Japan’s BMW obsession or Russia’s curiosity about Hyundai.

Toyota averaged more searches per month than any other manufacturer too, coming in at 7.8 million. Honda isn’t too far behind at 7 million per month and Ford (the only U.S. company in the top 10) was third, with 6.4 million per month. Last year, Google released its search data for the most popular car brands too. Ford led the way in 2017, and Toyota was down in fourth place. Strangely enough though, Lexus was number two in 2017, but appears to have been passed by its parent company. The only exotic on the list is Lamborghini, which received most of the love from Southern Asia, along with Central and South America.

We’ve got the least searched car brands too. Pagani was at the absolute bottom of the list, but Acura was last if you only considered mass-production car manufacturers selling cars in the U.S. Not too far ahead of them is Chrysler. The map Veygo put together is the most interesting way to check the data out, but there’s a chart listing them all if you’d rather examine the countries and searches that way too.